Friday, I went to the Boston Bike show last night. Meh. Lots of new bike porn, but I expected something more. Yes, it’s really cool to see all the new bikes and frames, but I would really have liked to see some of the components. Like, the new SRAM shifters and things. There really weren’t any parts for sale anywhere. Some remaindered clothing and that’s it. And beer. So it wasn’t a total loss. Worth the $5.00 to get in, I suppose.

Saturday was a bee-yoo-tiful day so I took the first long(ish) ride of the season. How long? It turns out, I’m not quite sure. I knew this was going to happen. Sharing a cyclometer between two bikes with different tire sizes is asking for trouble. Bike I is the road bike, bike II is the SS. The last bike I rode was the SS, so the cyclometer was set to II. So I changed it, but I must have hit the button twice because when I got home to log the miles, it was still selected to II. Still, the difference isn’t great so it can be off by much. Bike I is set to 1325,and bike II is set to 1350. This, I think, is the circumference in some unit of measure. Bike I is 700×23 (23-622), bike II is 700×32 (32-622).

So, here’s a word problem. If the cyclometer says I went 67.34 miles with a setting of 1350, how far did I actually go if the cyclometer should have been set to 1325? I think the total must be slightly less since each rotation of the wheel would be clocking 25 somethings too many. So you’d have to subtract 25 times however many wheel rotations there were, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. I got 66.09.

Anyway, it was a fantastic day. A bit cool to start, but really nice. Sunny and windy. It must have gotten close to 60. Lots of bikes out on the road. Many of them said this was their first ride of the season, so I guess I’m doing better than a lot. Ran into the x-status Fondriest guy I met a while back at the Bedford end of the Minuteman. Talked with a recumbment guy at the Carlisle deli where I stopped for a sandwich. I basically did the reverse Kimballs loop. Picked up the Minuteman in Lexington Center. It was packed. Jam packed. Made for some tricky riding trying to avoid the inline-skates-for-Christmas crowd and the little kids wandering all over the path. Still, I’d rather have them do that than sit home watching tv.

It sure was nice getting out for a good long ride.

Client meeting this morning for a conference call. It seemed to go pretty well (in spite of having to get there in 120 mph winds). I must now collaborate with someone from Kansas. Their tech guy seemed pretty with it, but their manager raised hackels. Luckily, $client has the same perspective. Stay tuned.

Victor's (Adam Beach) father dies and Victor needs to go claim the remains. He doesn't have the money, but Thomas (Evan Adams) agrees to give him the money if he (Thomas) can accompany Victor on the trip. So they set off from the Coeur d' Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho headed for Arizona. This becomes more than a road movie mostly because of the interaction between Victor and Thomas, but the other characters are well played as well.

Thomas really grated on my nerves after a while. I don't know what that speech affectation was supposed to do but it reminded me of that SNL sketch about "This one time? At band camp?" If you can overlook that, it's an interesting character since he's supposed to be spinning stories of Victor's father with varying degrees of truthfulness. In fact the whole movie seemed to revolve around what's true and what's legend. The only indisputed thing was that Victor's father had saved Thomas from a burning house that killed Thomas's parents. Beyond that, nothing is quite certain. Did Victor's father start the fire? Did he abandon the family by "accident"?

This is turning out to be more of an interesting movie in hindsight than at viewing time. There are appearances for Tom Skerrit as the sherrif and Elaine Mills who played the receptionist in Northern Exposure.

Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of King Lear set in feudal Japan. Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to, in effect, retire, and divides his kingdom among his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) setting off a war for control of the entire kingdom.

This is a visually stunning film with a cast of billions. I can't begin to imagine what the cost for wardrobe alone for this film would be. I regret to say I've never seen King Lear, but this was good. It suffered only in length. At nearly three hours long, they really could have cut out some of the cloud gazing and fretting and tightened it up a bit. The story is madly compelling with treachery and every other human foible on promient display. The performance of Mieko Harada as Lady Kaede who eventually nearly destroyed everything taking revenge on the Ichimonji was outstanding. And again, the scenery was breathtaking.

could become grating I supppose, but when it was originally done by Allyson Hannigan in American Pie, it worked really well, though that could just be my inclinations, I imagine I'd enjoy Allyson Hannigan reading log tables.

of the Porky's vein, but suprisingly sweet natured, and include Eugene Levy, a sort of juvenile sex comedy that exceeds it's genre, at least for the first one ( haven't seen the other two). Plus, they mention lacrosse, how many movies mention lacrosse? And the jock lacrosse player is also in chorus.

If there's circumference, you can get radius out of that, and you know the difference, it's (difference)/2pi times measured mileage less, right ? (Granted, it's still a trivial amount.)

And hell, given tire deformation, PSI/inflation of the tire, etc.. I think anything anywhere near accurate is "good enough" for bike computers.. I mean, c'mon, measure circumference in mm ? You gotta be joking..

insufficient component porn clearly has entirely too much bike porn in his area.

The only thing I've seen recently was a Bianchi EV3 Custom Centaur 04 going relatively cheap. My size too. However, given that I am the slowest cyclist in the universe I decided to stick with my old red Trofeo, so I gave it to the man and said: "fix the damn gears already."

Now I've done some 5 mile runs and already hurt my knee... blah... it's going to be a long road to fitness I think.

So for us poor fools far from component porn, what's so cool about the SRAM stuff?

They've got a new shifter coming out. It looks the same as an STI, but you only have to click in one direction instead of two. Honestly, I don't see a huge advantage, I'm just really curious how it works with being able to shift up or down by clicking in only one direction.

languages, they just pretend not to in order to maintain the good deal they've got going on with the free food, napping all day, and making poops in the outdoors on city sidewalks. I mean, if you could make poops on city sidewalks and have some dude pick it up for you, would you let on that you were capable of more civilized behavior? I know I wouldn't.

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You can build the most elegant fountain in the world, but eventually a winged rat will be using it as a drinking bowl.

Recently, a series of clothing shops had their store fronts defaced with the phrase "bike culture is not for sale."

Normally I wouldn't mind, except the folks hit have always dealt me square and the sale that was so ardently despised by the self-appointed protector of bike culture was a sale were a % of the profits were going to a charity that refurbishes used bikes and gives them to needy kids.

Do you think the Critical Mass/Ghost Bike were people behind these? Since you pegged the ghost bike thing, I thought you might know.

I should point out the the local bike shop - where bike culture is, in fact, on sale - was untouched.

But it had to do with someone using rehab'd bikes in a storefront window. The thugs doing the defacing took that as using "bike cuture" to promote capitalism. (Something that Nike and Puma have been trying to do, unsuccessfully for the most part.) That, of course, had to be stopped.

His books are really very good. Painful and nostalgic and touching. The movie, the guy that played the dad? He's in "Dead Man," my favorite Jim Jarmusch film. You should netflix that one if you haven't seen it.---------------------------------
Taken out of context I must seem so strange - Ani DiFranco

I think for me I'm just not a fan of tragedies. I have enough in my life, thankyouverymuch. Plus, I keep hearing the voice from one of the characters in Heavy Metal, dripping with ennui: "You die, she dies, everybody dies."

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